When I Was A Child

I Corinthians 13:11 - When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

I am now 42 years old, surely old enough to lay down the last of my childish ways.  Surely with this gray hair comes wisdom - or is it the other way around? I am at a point in my life where I have nowhere to go but up.  Actually, this is a lie, and a dangerous one at that.  Things can always get worse.  Things are not that bad.  When I take stock, I actually have a lot to be thankful for.  But I am hungry for more. I am hungry for stability, for order, for clarity.  I am no longer content with the blind optimism of my youth, the idea that it will all work out.  Look where that thinking got me.  It has not all worked out.  I am not lucky, or fortunate, or blessed, at least not beyond the balanced proportions of also being unlucky, unfortunate, and cursed.  Yes, Matthew 5:45 tells us that it rains on the just and the unjust. What was left out is that you can be the only one being rained on, and it is still true.  I am just and unjust. I am heroic and I am cowardly. I am kind and I am cruel.  I thus receive both sunshine and rain.  I am smart and yet also a fool.  I am also 42.  And I am working it out.